The Power of Nightmares- Part iii

[swilton]

The Power of Nightmares - Part iii

This is the third of the three-part series from the BBC (authored and produced by Adam Curtis) THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES. You can watch the entire three part series at the link below or on Netflix. Of note, some of the comments added on the internet link note that this movie is censored in the US. I found the movie through netflix after hearing that it was offered as a premium from the Democracy Now portion of our community supported, local radio station (WPFW/89.3 FM for those in the local Washington DC metro area).

Anyway, here is the internet link.

http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares


September 11, 2001, resurrected the failing Islamist and neo-conservative ideologies. Both employed fear as a fantasy tactic to reap unprecedented power for political leaders of both groups.

For the Islamists, due to their violent tactics in Algeria and Egypt, revolutionary groups had alienated the masses. With this failure of the revolutionary movements against the ‘enemy near’ strategist Ayman Zawahiri, a follower of Said Qutb, conceived of a strategy to mobilize the masses with an attack the ‘enemy afar’ directly in the West. The grand enemy of these revolutionary groups was always Western influence which was perceived to infect and corrupt the masses.

Since early 2001, American prosecutors had invented Al Qaeda as a network in order to hold bin Laden accountable for late 1990’s embassy bombings in East Africa. Al Qaeda as an organization was created as a legal entity analogous to the mafia to facilitate prosecution within the framework of the US court system. The key witness whose testimony was used by the FBI had previously and since been discredited and also brought up on charges of fraud. (Jason Burke, author of ‘Al Qaeda’ refers) Bin Laden had not used the term ‘Al Qaeda’ until after September, 2001 - its status as a powerful and global organization had largely been attributed to embellishments from the rhetoric of US politicians in the aftermath of September 11.

The neo-conservative architects, (Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle), previously discredited with the impeachment of President Clinton, enjoyed a resurgence after September 11. The Americans, later joined by the British, set off to invade Afghanistan to strike at the heart of the mythical network they had created. The Zawahiri group loosely organized and small had largely since dispersed. Enemy combatants arrested in Afghanistan by the US were largely guilty of opposing war lords aligned with the US rather than being associated with bin Laden.

Within the US the neo-conservatives looked for evidence of Al Qaeda sleeper cells and dirty bombs to dramatize the threat. In the case of the sleeper cells, the projected fantasies were discredited as evidence became apparent. The threats from the dirty bombs were discredited by scientists who warned that the greatest danger of a dirty bomb was that it created panic. Hidden links became identified between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. As the scale of fantasies grew, more and more political groups realized the power that it gave them.

Tony Blair perhaps best illustrates the employment of the ‘precautionary principal’ - an notion conceived by green political movements to address the threat from global warming. The precautionary principal meant that not having evidence that something (in the case of environmentalists, global warming) might happen is not a reason for not taking action. The government had the moral duty to act on an imagined threat and couldn’t wait for evidence - by the time that evidence was present it would be too late.
Applied to the global war on terror, the fear of an imagined future drove decision making, and the politician who had the most vivid imagination would win the argument and accumulated the power. Applied to the justice system, governments in the US and Britain became able to short circuit due processes that in the past had distinguished guilt from innocence.

The movie ends with the comment in the aftermath of the Cold War people had lost their belief systems. While socialism on the left and capitalism on the right each had their flaws, without the Cold War and the rhetoric of either faction there was a vacuum. The fear created by the War on Terror filled that vacuum. Societies that believe in nothing are susceptible to being easily frightened.

[librechik]

1. Adam Curtis's other documentaries, "Century of the Self" and "The Trap"

are even better IMO--find them on Google videos or someplace

heres' a place to watch the whole lot--highly recommended!
http://www.rewtube.com/

scroll down the page for the Curtis list